There is, actually. Ships with a high Hull and Shields are a lot harder to damage using this rule, which means that taking them out requires bigger guns, not a lot of small ones. It's not that the little guns can't get it done eventually, but the individual shots lack the concentrated power of a larger cannon.

That's how it works in real-world combat; ships like WWII battleships were hard to kill, and to do it, you needed either heavy cannon (like those found on other battleships) or heavy bombs and torpedos delivered by aircraft or submarines, and even they usually took multiple hits to do the job. Often, that took the form of hitting and getting lucky with one or two shots that hit just the right place at the right time, causing catastrophic damage.

So, with this rule, any combat situation involving combined fire is going to represent one or two proton torpedoes or laser blasts that just happened to find their way through and hit something good for damage.

This ties in with my overall rule changes, where I'm re-stating the larger Capital Ships in my system to have both a large number of Frigate-Scale weapons and a smaller number of Destroyer-Scale weapons, which would be consistent with battleship and cruiser weapon design before guided missiles took over._________________"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

I don't think there is in the context of my original post. I was talking about the tradeoff required between how you are handling to hit rolls and extra damage and the way I handle same.

CRMcNeil Method: Shooter cannot split their skill to do extra damage on a successful hit. But they do extra damage if they exceed the target number (1/3 pts). Let's say the shooter rolls 30 over the target number. Thus they get +10 damage.
Bren Method: Shooter does extra damage if they exceed the target number (1/5 pts). If the shooter rolls 30 over the target number they do +6 damage. Obviously this is less damage than under your method so a shooter would always prefer your method.

But I have an option for the shooter to split their skill dice between to hit and a damage bonus (typically 1/2 dice). But the downside for this option is the shooter may try that and miss altogether. So a shooter might allocate 6D (this decreases his to hit roll but if successful it increases his damage by +3D). Assuming similar rolls to the first example, taking 6D away will on average lower the total by 21 points. Now instead of rolling 30 over the target number the shooter only rolls 9 over the target number, but the shooter does +3D damage (~ 10 or 11 points) and an additional +2 points for exceeding the target number. So the shooter does +12 or +13 damage, but with the risk that the shot may miss.

There is no comparable downside for your higher damage bonus for rolls that exceed the to hit number. (I thought we went through the tradeoffs of the various methods and the downside question on a prior page. Am I missing something?)

I don't recall. I did suggest something similar before, and ended up putting the idea on hold for a while. Ultimately, though, I don't think splitting skill dice to Damage is appropriate for a ranged weapon like a blaster (Melee weapons or Strength-based ranged weapons would be a better fit, IMO)._________________"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.